Posted
by
michaelon Friday August 20, 2004 @05:13PM
from the have-sling-will-travel dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Flexbeta reviewsXandros Business Desktop 2.5 which is aimed directly at Microsoft Windows users who want to run a Linux Distribution within a mixed network, especially networks based around a Microsoft Windows Domain Controller or Active Directory Server. What makes this latest version of Xandros a Windows killer? Apart from the networking capabilities, Xandros also features drag and drop CD burning as well as Crossover Office 3, letting you run MS Office and Internet Explorer."

... because Crossover Office, despite what the name imlies, does far more than allow you to run MS Office on Linux. It's a fully commercially supported "fork" of the Wine project, and as well as Office allows you to run Notes, IE (although why anyone would want to is beyond me) and any other app supported by Wine.

Look, Xandros is a nice end user distro, but that's about it. The true Windows replacements (killers is just childish) are those with name brand recognition and enterprise level support, namely Novells' SuSE and RedHat. No offense to users of other distros, but the 24/7, follow the sun support and consulting arms demanded by enterprise class clients are currently limited to the two I've mentioned.

I went to the Xandros site thinking "Hey! Another distro to try. Time to grab an ISO!" Sadly, the download section of their site is relagated to the "About" [xandros.com] page and they charge for the download... Except for the "Open Circulation" edition which has few [xandros.com] of the features advertised here (It doesn't even come with Mozilla and has crippled CD burning software) The only edition to have all of this "killer" tech is the business edition for a $129 download fee (you get some books and some closed source-ware too).

Given the price, this doesn't look so "killer" anymore. In fact, it looks a bit over-priced. I may fork over $100 for a nice SuSE boxed edition, but I still have the opportunity to run the full distro for free if I take the time to download it instead. If I'm forced to pay $129 for a distro, why not just go pick up XP Home? What, if any, is the incentive for people to switch then? To pay one greedy company over another? Has anyone tried the "Open Circulation" edition that thinks the full version would be worth the cash?

Stop whining. The problem with Microsoft is not the price (which is currently rather low). For a business, the bigger problem is the abundance of viruses, worms, and spyware trojans. Not to mention that users can install a wide variety of unwanted apps on their work desktop, such as Kazaa, IM clients, Solitaire, and so on (this causes liability concerns and can reduce productivity). Linux is a lot easier to completely lock down. Keep in mind that a single computer that goes down costs a company hundreds of dollars (given that it typically takes 2-5 hours of sysadmin time to fix a Windows problem). That's not including lost productivity, which can easily quadruple that.

Also, if you are running an MS OS on many thousands of computers, you have no choice if MS suddenly decides to charge $1000 per copy per year for a business version of Windows. If they didn't have to compete with Linux and Mac, this would be a distinct possibility. At least Xandros has no way to lock you in, given that it's compatible with almost all other Linux distros.

I didn't think I was whining, but to each their own... Good points by the way. I wan't thinking of it in a large rollout scenario. The pricing does still seem odd for a distro though... but then again, Redhat may have inspired them some;) So, are you thinking of deploying it?

Sorry I thought you were whining, but I've heard the "Linux vendors should give away everything for free" line way too many times. I like free stuff, but it's not reasonable to expect anyone to give everything away. I'm happy enough they contribute to KDE and such.

If you are rolling out a large number of machines (i.e. more than 20), I am sure Xandros will be more than happy to customize the distro and offer a deep discount. Companies don't buy from microsoft at $150 a copy, either. I think the reason

Uh...I believe you mean "n'est-ce pas." For those of us who don't speak French, it translates to "yes?" or "no?" or "right?". Basically, it's just a construction that turns a declarative sentence into a question.

It can take a couple of hours just to install all the patches on an older machine. Considering that there are plenty of Ad-aware-resistant trojans out there these days, it can take several hours to update a machine and get rid of all the spyware.

" If I'm forced to pay $129 for a distro, why not just go pick up XP Home? What, if any, is the incentive for people to switch then?"

Well, it may sound like a troll, but 'its not windows' is a fair answer. There are certain companies that specifically want non-windows workstations(in part or in their entire enterprise).They don't mind paying money.

Besides, TCO of Windows, when including Office and subscriptions to AV software, can, in the right situation(not needing to retrain your staff if they are already knowledgable, for instance) can be much higher. It all depends on the company, the needs and the assets. Paying 130 bucks per seat for an OS, but saving X because it was Xandros and not Windows, can be well worth it.

you obviously didn't run it... mozilla is available through xandros networks, which involves a free registration.

the cd burning software can be enabled for 39.00 (the cost for the "standard" version--not the business version) or you can use non-xandros tools; the cd burning is within XFM. there's nothing stopping you from installing a 3rd party app.

my biggest bitch about xandros has to do with the fact that most of the stuff that's available through XN is a touch out of date, but that's the price you pay

Although you can download SuSE over the net, the version they offer has a cut down package selection and doesn't offer many of the nice features of the SuSE Linux Desktop or the Standard / Enterprise Server editions. For example, you can't just *download* Crossover Office, since this is a licensed product.

This is the same for all commercial linux distributions. Some are offered for free download, but why should they give away their USPs (Unique Selling Points)?

I've tried many in the last few years, as a daily desktop OS. XandrOS 2 came closer than any other, I was really pleased with it.

Then I tried the RC1 installer for Debian Sarge, upon which XandrOS (and Linspire) are based. Hands-down, the current Sarge release is the best desktop Linux I've ever tried. The clincher was when a friend sent me a video inside an email, and when I opened it in Thunderbird, the video started playing. Just like a real desktop OS should.:)

I'd tried Woody and Sid previously, and been underwhelmed -- but Sarge is terrific.